Dorothy Cannon
1909-1999
Thanksgiving 1995
Dorothy's output and talent were prodigious; she worked every day of her adult life at painting and drawing. From 1954 until the week before she died she taught at her own art school for children, giving her ample opportunity to do her own work. She worked in oils, watercolor, tempera, pencil, pen, pastels, crayon, charcoal, ceramics, enamel, and many less conventional media, producing landscapes, figure studies, portraits, still lifes, abstracts, and images difficult to classify. She made prints from copper etchings, woodcuts, and silk screens. (In the early 1950s, with another artist, she started a business to produce silk screened greeting cards; this site will displays a single example.) She made collages in paper, glass, and odd materials. She wrote and illustrated children's stories. At her school, always a beehive of activity, she taught generations of children, many of whom are now professional artists, and her weekly figure-drawing sessions for adults went on for decades.
Of the works that came out of this lifetime of artistic endeavor, most have long since been sold, given away, lost, or destroyed - for example, of the the 35 paintings on this site from the 1997 exhibit, only eight remain. Dorothy didn't care; to her art was something to do, not to keep. She wasn't always careful to paint on long-lasting materials, or to preserve her work. Even so, when she died in 1999 her collection of her own work included over a thousand paintings and thousands of drawings, all of which passed to her sister Kathryn Hosler. On Kathryn's death in 2006 this collection became, temporarily, the property of Kathryn and Dorothy's trust. As trustee I catalogued and photographed the bulk of the collection. Exhibiting the results on this site serves as a memorial to Dorothy and a vehicle for showing her work to the world. The size of the collection is astonishing; I'm confident that even Dorothy would be surprised.
If you haven't met Dorothy's work, start with the Introductory tour for new visitors. I would appreciate any comments by email - on Dorothy's work or this site.
Jay Hosler
April 5, 2007
Revised 27 October 2009
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